Easy Steps for Good Retail Experience

We can’t help but take the retail experience for granted. We walk in, shop, and check out. The journey through the store — what makes up the retail store experience — isn’t thought about at all as we go through it.

But developing an impressionable retail experience isn’t easy. Which is why we’ve compiled a few steps below to keep in mind as businesses strive to create the best retail store experience possible.

Store Design

The retail store experience is largely dependent on a store’s design. There has to be logic to the layout. Meaning, customers who have never stepped inside the store before being able to intuitively guide themselves along their journey.

The best retail store experience includes aspects, such as:

Wide enough hallways for customers at busy times of the day.

Clear labels that direct the customer’s journey.

Bright lighting to illuminate the store.

Sounds obvious, right? Sure. But retail designs can be improved in not so obvious ways as well.

For instance, there is a tendency to believe that the more merchandise, the better — that stores should surround customers with items to buy. But that doesn’t mean you should be putting items near the entrance!

Those first steps a customer takes into a store are called the decompression zone. It’s exactly what it sounds like: the place where customers adjust to the store.

In Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping, Paco Underhill writes, “By the time the person is starting to engage with the physical environment, some of the stuff you’ve put by the door is blown past.”

To summarize, don’t put items in the decompression zone.

Companies have to think about the customer’s immediate journey and design a layout which will enable them to have an amazing retail experience.

Making use of greenery and natural lighting creates a congenial environment. The kind of retail experience customers are more likely to visit when they’re in need of a particular item.

The point is that an amazing retail experience is created through seemingly tiny improvements. Things that we don’t always think about or recognize.

The Single Line

What customers want when they line up at the checkout queue is first come, first serve. Afterall, the saying is both one of the definitions of justice and the best retail store experience.

The best way to ensure “first come, first serve,” is to direct customers into a single queue, what’s called a serpentine queue.

It’s not necessarily faster than the standard practice of multiple lanes and multiple registers. But the slithering line does ensure that customers never have to feel ill-served because someone else has checked out before them.

Add Merchandise

A serpentine line makes it a simple matter to add eye-catching merchandise to the queue. Which, if the item is right, may result in an impulse purchase — while also providing a distraction for customers.

Specialty computer stores may opt to feature USBs, canned air, or energy drinks near their checkout. This particular store knows that these items routinely end up in their customer’s shopping carts.

“Nine in ten Americans (91%) consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company. But only one-quarter (24%) believe companies value their business and will go the extra mile to keep it.”